Had Mayank Agarwal been available for Karnataka's second round of Ranji Trophy match against Jammu & Kashmir, Karun Nair might not even have found a place in the XI. KV Siddharth had 146 & 39 to his name in the opening round against Railways, making himself undroppable. And nobody would have questioned the wisdom behind it.
It had been a while since Karun made a century for Karnataka across formats. Let alone hundreds, there was a period where even making runs seemed difficult for Karun, only the second Indian in history to make a triple century in Tests. To be precise, since he scored four centuries in the 2017/18 season, which put him on the plane for India's Test tour to England, he has not scored a century for Karnataka.
The last time Karun showed signs of coming to form was in the Duleep Trophy in 2019 August, where he scored 99, 166 n.o, 90, 20. It gave hope to a good Ranji season, but only for him to average 26.14 in the tournament. The world was a lot different then.
And on February 24, 2022, Karun scored his first FC century for Karnataka in nearly four years as his unbeaten 152 single-handedly carried Karnataka to 268/8 at the end of Day 1 against Jammu & Kashmir at the IIT-Chemplast campus in Chennai on Thursday. "This means a lot. Really glad that I could make the start count and make it into a big hundred," Karun said.
In the time that Karun has missed making hundreds, from being a contender for middle-order slot in the Indian Test team, he has gone down the pecking order. The next generation of players have come and overtaken him. And ahead of what is an important season for him personally, all the practice that Karun had was just one batting session at the nets.
Having tested COVID positive for the second time, Karun had joined the Karnataka team in Bengaluru late after testing negative. But on the eve of the team's departure to Chennai, he again tested positive forcing him to miss the first match.
And walking in at No 3, after Karnataka lost Devdutt Padikkal early for 8 on Thursday, Karun looked every bit his old self. The timing was impeccable and so was his shot selection as he carried on even as wickets fell around him at regular intervals.
More than the runs, the manner in which he paced his innings was what stood out. After reaching the century just after the drinks break in the second session, he dropped anchor as the middle-order lost the plot against a spirited J&K attack.
The celebration upon scoring the century said a story or two. The monkey seemed to be off his back. But Karun disagreed. "I didn't think there was any monkey behind my back. It was just that monkey was put on my back by others. As far as I'm concerned, there was no Ranji Trophy for two years and I'd one bad season in the Ranji Trophy and in terms of white-ball cricket, I haven't done well enough in the opportunities I got. I haven't got big scores. But if I look back, I didn't have that many opportunities up the order to make big scores. I never really bothered about monkey being on my back, I just wanted to contribute and make the team wins," Karun said.
Karun couldn't have ended the century drought for Karnataka on a better day than this. On a pitch where there were plenty of first innings runs on the offering, Karnataka would be cursing themselves for being only 268/8, especially with all things pointing out to this match being the one that will decide the group topper.
"I think we lost about three wickets more than what we would have liked. We could have been 300/4 or 300/3 on this wicket. It was important for us to build a partnership and we were not able to do that," Karun said.